Читать книгу Beautiful Lie the Dead - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 9

FOUR

Within an hour, a full-scale ground search was underway, and although the duty inspector pulled out all the stops, he was not optimistic.

“The goddamn city is more than 4500 square kilometres, Green, and that’s assuming she even stayed in the city and isn’t sunning herself on a beach in Cuba.”

“At least we know that’s unlikely,” Green replied. “There’s no record of her leaving the country.”

“But in case it escaped your notice, we got forty centimetres of snow since she disappeared and more coming down as we speak. We could be standing on top of her and not know it. Plus the rivers aren’t frozen yet, and if she thought she could take a short cut across the Rideau River, she could be on the bottom somewhere.”

Green was silent. Inspector Doyle was just sounding off. The two of them were in the communication centre, and Doyle was merely saying in private what he would never say on the record.

Somewhere in this dark, frigid city, a young woman was lost and no one had a clue where to look. Officers were still piecing together her final day, which according to her parents had started normally enough. She had taken Monday off work to run errands for the wedding, and after her usual breakfast of yogurt and granola, she had set off on the bus for downtown. She’d been a bit vague about the errands, and her mother had not pressed her. Meredith had always liked her independence, she’d said, and she was getting a little tense as the date drew near.

The bus driver remembered her getting off at the Westboro transit station, but from there she was swallowed up in the crowds of commuters and Christmas shoppers heading downtown.

Using “Elena’s fucking to-do list” which Gibbs had taken from the house, officers were tracking down each of the businesses involved, from florist to travel medicine clinic, but by eight o’clock that evening there had not been a single confirmed sighting. Whatever Meredith had done that day, she had not made a dent in the fucking to-do list.

She had phoned her friend Jessica at 5:45, but from her cellphone, so she could have been anywhere. Jessica remembered chatter and Christmas music in the background, so volunteers had been dispatched with her photo to all the malls between downtown and Bayshore.

“But it’s a goddamn needle in a haystack,” Doyle said. “Every two-bit corner store plays Christmas music. So does the radio. I heard ‘Sleigh Bells’ a hundred times today alone!”

Meredith’s description was on every radio station, her photo on every television channel and in every patrol car. Taxi drivers had been alerted. “Something will break,” Green said. “Now that it’s caught the public eye, someone will remember seeing her.”

Doyle eyed him grimly. Both men knew there would be a thousand sightings, and nine hundred and ninety-nine would be false.

By the time Green finally left the station at nine p.m., however, that one useful lead had not materialized. Snow was falling thickly again, blanketing sound and snarling pre-Christmas traffic on the slippery roads. Red tail lights stretched solid along the Queensway in both directions as cars crawled out towards the suburbs. Turning his back gratefully on the gridlock, Green steered his Subaru along Catherine Street towards his Highland Park home. On his quiet residential backstreet, Christmas lights caught the snowflakes and glistened like rubies and emeralds on the freshly fallen snow. For a moment he forgot how much he hated winter.

He was reminded again when he reached his house to find ten centimetres of fresh snow waiting for him on the driveway. The double furrow of tire tracks from Sharon’s car was fading under new snow. His wife had long since gone to work, leaving Hannah in charge of Tony and dinner.

The television was blasting “So You Think You Can Dance” in the living room and the teenager and the five-year-old were sprawled on the floor eating chips and laughing. The only one to notice his arrival was Modo, who padded into the hall wagging her tail shyly. Modo was a humane society acquisition who even after two years in their home still acted as if she feared she was unwelcome. He ruffled her ears as he glanced at the mail Sharon had left on the hall table. Nothing but Christmas flyers.

A commercial came on, and Tony leaped to his feet and came running into the hall. He laughed when Green swooped him up into the air. “What are you still doing up, buddy!”

“Hannah said I could watch instead of a story.”

Green glanced at Hannah, whose expression said “I’ve fed him and entertained him. You want to make something of it?” Not tonight, sweetheart, he thought. Not when we have other things to talk about. At least Tony was in his pyjamas. With a final hug, Green set him down. “As soon as that’s over, then. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

He went into the living room to drop a kiss on his daughter’s head before heading into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge. The remains of pizza sat congealing in the fridge. Pizza had been ordered in for the teams in the central command post at the station, and he had snagged two slices while he and the duty inspector reviewed reports. Now he bypassed the pizza in favour of chocolate cake. No sooner had he taken his first bite and found the Sudoku in the morning paper when Tony came flying into the kitchen, ricocheting off walls as he imitated the latest contestant. Hip hop. Green shuddered.

“You want Tom Sawyer, or are you going to read your own book?”

“I want to stay down here with you and eat cake!”

Green eyed his son’s broad, infectious smile. Sharon’s smile, dazzling in its warmth. He’d hardly seen the little guy today. Conceding defeat, he cut another slice and listened while Tony chattered on about the show. Through the chatter he heard Hannah switch off the television. She came to stand in the kitchen doorway a minute, watching them, then turned to head upstairs. She looked unusually worried. He wondered if her mother had already been working on her.

It was almost an hour before he gave Tony his final goodnight kiss and shut his bedroom door. Barely five years old, the little boy seemed to need less sleep than most grown men and had devised a remarkable repertoire of stall tactics. Half an hour of bedtime story was essential, despite the fact that Tony was beginning to read for himself. Then came a dozen questions about the chapter they had read and what was going to happen to Tom Sawyer next.

Hannah’s door was closed by the time Green finished, and he went down to pour himself a glass of wine before facing her, fortifying himself not for his daughter but for the tricky foray into the mother-daughter minefield.

To his surprise, she was standing in the kitchen doorway when he turned around. The worried look was back. “That missing woman. That’s where you were tonight?”

He nodded.

“Any luck finding her?”

“Not yet. But she may just have taken off.” Green didn’t like bringing his work home. He needed some walls, not only to shield his family but himself. There had to be a place in his life where evil was barred at the door. He took a deep breath, preparing to change the subject. “Want some wine?”

Hannah’s smile grew wary. “Uh-oh.”

He grinned, hoping to ease the path. He had no worries about the example he was setting. In her wild eighteen years, Hannah had done far worse. “Your mother called.”

“I figured something like that.”

“She wants you home for the holidays.”

“I am home.”

It was three simple words, but it packed a punch. For a moment he couldn’t speak. As if she feared she’d strayed too far into mushy land, she shrugged. “Christmas in Lotusland isn’t the same. It rains, everyone gets hammered and Mom gets the whole thing catered with the weirdest food. Peking duck, Pad Thai, seaweed soufflé. She and Fred get in a fight, he goes off to see his kids and I have to listen to Mom say I’m all she’s got.”

Green smiled at her sadly. It sounded so like Ashley; she’d always had the brains and maturity of a two-year-old. “Maybe things are different now.”

“Yeah, maybe she’ll have had so much botox and nip and tuck that I won’t recognize her. Maybe she’ll have dyed her hair black.”

“She misses you, honey.”

“She doesn’t even know who I am!” Hannah shot back. She had joined him at the kitchen table, and he noted that she’d already drained her wine glass. He didn’t offer another, suspecting that even the first had been a mistake.

“Honestly, all those years I lived with her, I never felt like I belonged. I kept thinking there was something wrong with me, because I’d look at Mom with her bleached blonde hair and her pretty dresses and her little girl oohs and ahhs, and I’d feel like a big, ugly lump!”

Green suppressed his astonishment. Hannah was barely five-foot two, as petite and delicate as a pixie. “You’re gorgeous!” he said, feeling like all fathers the inadequacy of the praise. As he expected, she snorted in dismissal.

“Why couldn’t I love her, why couldn’t I be what she wanted? I thought she must have messed with some alien from outer space. Until I met you.” She looked across at him and reached for the wine bottle, daring him to disapprove.

He held his tongue. “The alien from outer space?”

She grinned. “Yeah, I know. It took me a long time to realize I was staring in the mirror. But I feel more like me here, with you and the Ritalin kid and Zaydie than I ever did in fifteen years with her.” She took a hefty slug. “And in case you start getting ideas, that just means you’re as edgy and crazy and angry as me. You don’t look at the world through this lacy film of superficiality. Mom doesn’t live, she floats. She’s got no anchor, and the minute she bumps up against something ugly, she bounces off into sparkly waters again. I couldn’t stand going back with her, Mike. Not after—”

“But she’s your mother.”

“Is she?”

Startled, Green laughed. “Of course! Of that I’m sure. I wasn’t sure of much else back in those days, but I remember your birth. Your mother was as far from pretty dresses and perfect hair as you can imagine. She sweated and cursed and howled in pain to have you, and when you finally decided to come out—ass first, I might add—she loved you from the first second she held you in her arms. We both did.”

Hannah stared into her wine glass. She was still, as if the air was too thick to breathe. Green waited, understanding her well enough now to know she was hard at work behind the stillness.

“Fuck,” she muttered eventually.

“It doesn’t have to be for long,” he said. “A week, maybe?”

“I don’t want to miss Hanukkah,” she said, still not looking at him. “Who knows how long Zaydie...”

There was no need to finish the thought. It was one he himself thought almost every day. His father was eighty-eight, with a feeble heart and failing lungs, facing each cold winter even frailer than the last.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “that’s the great thing about Hanukkah. It’s eight days long.”